How Ned Got His Powers
by the-orphan-jedi
Summary: This AU story imagines how Ned the Piemaker got his powers of raising the dead, and involves his father paying a visit to a town called Gravity Falls and meeting a terrifying creature of incredible power.


_At this very moment, young Ned was 9 years, 27 weeks, 4 days, and 3 minutes old. And at that very same moment, his father was busy on a road trip several states away._

 _Ned's father had always been obsessed with magic tricks and magic shows, and was forever in search of the ultimate stage trick that he could pull off. As his research into the subject delved further, he began to discover cases that could only be explained as being_ _ **real**_ _magic, a possibility with fascinated him more than anything else._

 _These paranormal occurrences were scattered across the world, but the highest concentration of them anywhere in the country was in a small lumber town in Roadkill County, Oregon…Gravity Falls._

 _On his way there now, Ned's father visualized what sort of things he could find and, hopefully, bring home from that strange town. With real magic on display, his shows would gather much larger audiences, and generate much more money to support his loving wife and young son Ned._

 _Ned's father's first impression of Gravity Falls was a disappointment. He scoured the town all day, searching for anything that could possibly be interpreted as paranormal or supernatural - but he found nothing, and worse yet, all the townspeople denied having seen_ _ **anything**_ _of that sort in town at all._

 _Exhausted and upset about his failure, Ned's father fell asleep uncomfortably in his parked car, having no better place to stay and too tired to drive home that night._

 _He was startled awake by a particularly uncomfortable feeling in his head - and strange sounds, sounds that sounded something like distorted chimes. He sat up in his car and looked around. In the distance in the woods, he saw a faint blue light glowing._

 _Something that could be supernatural! He quickly got out of his car and bolted for the woods, following the blue light._

 _At first, it seemed that the the closer he got to the light, the farther away it appeared. But then, all of a sudden, Ned found himself standing in a small clearing in a very dark part of the forest…_

 _and in the middle of the clearing was the glowing image of a smartly-dressed yellow triangle._

 _The triangle's single white eye slowly opened, its slitted pupil surveying the man before him._

 _At first, Ned's father was speechless. But then, student of magical illusions as he was, he realized the image before him must be a trick, projected by some sort of master of illusions, from whom he surely could learn something useful that he could bring to the stage!_

"H-ha ha! Very impressive, my dear sir, if I may say!" _Ned's father nervously said, gathering his wits. The image of the triangle, while a little startling, was, after all, an illusion, right?_

 _What he did not know, however, was that this was_ _ **not**_ _an illusion. An accident with an interdimensional portal in Gravity Falls had sometime earlier summoned a creature from another world, a conscious yet bodyless being which can only exist in the nightmares of others. This creature, whose personal goals were still unknown, sought only chaos and destruction upon those he met._

 _But Ned's father did not know this._

"Well, well! Nice to meet someone who can recognize awesome when he sees it! The name's Bill Cipher!" _the triangle said._

"Nice to meet you, sir," _Ned's father said. The triangle's voice unnerved him for reasons he couldn't describe, but he insisted to himself that it was only an illusion. He chose to bring that up as the next subject of conversation._

"Your illusion is quite terrifying, sir, quite a success! I am a stage magician from Couer d' Coures…I don't suppose you've ever heard of it, ha ha. Anyway, I came to this town in search of a master of magic such as yourself, for I am seeking a new act for my show…preferably, one with **real** magic. Do you suppose…er…might you give me some advice?"

 _Bill the triangle hovered there for a moment, his bulging eye staring unblinking at Ned's father. Ned's father did not know what Bill was thinking, and why he was taking so long to respond, and he started to feel a little uneasy._

 _This is what Bill was thinking:_

 _Bill could read minds - not every particle of a person's mind, mind you, but he could skim through and gain a surprising amount of detailed information from a person's past and future just by looking at them. Bill was weighing the possibilities in his mind of how he should deal with this stranger. This stranger was from a town far away, very far from anybody Bill was interested in, very far from anybody to do with the portal he had come from, very far from anything supernatural or paranormal like himself. Honestly, this fake magician was disgusting to Bill, and the only use Bill could glean from this encounter would be strictly entertainment. Luckily, Bill was also a huge fan of his own kind of entertainment, so he started to devise a plan._

"Oh, I can give you something even better than advice, mister. You want magic? I'll give you a show that will people will **die** to see!"

"Goodness! Thank you, sir, thank you! What show might this be?"

"Hold up now, hold up," _Bill said._ "This is for your family, right?"

"Why, yes - how did you - ?"

"Never mind that, buddy…that's even better! I've got the perfect show for ya! One the whole family can enjoy! How do you feel about…curses?"

"Curses?" _Ned's father asked, surprised._ "I suppose the idea has its charms. Nothing too harmless, I assume?…"

"No no no, in fact the opposite of harmful, as far from harmful as you can get!" _the triangle glowed brightly in excitement._ "How about we seal the deal with a handshake so we can get this started?"

"Yes, sir," _Ned's father said excitedly, extending his hand._

 _Bill's hand suddenly erupted in blue flames. (Quite a fancy trick, I hope something like that is in my new act! Ned's father thought.) The flame-covered hand grasped Ned's father's._

 _Immediately, a violent tingling sensation swept through Bill's father, and his soul suddenly hurt to the depths of his being. He leapt back, startled._

"What was that? Your illusion machine must be broken, I think it shocked me," _Ned's father said._

"HA HA HA HA HA!" _Bill laughed, and his voice caused the whole forest around them to shake and quiver._ "You still think I'm just an illusion? Gullible tourist! Ha ha ha!"

"But - b-but - then - what are you?" _Ned's father gazed terrified at the glowing triangle before him, now noticing that the image was much too pristine for an illusion._

"That doesn't concern you, mister. Now go home and enjoy your show!"

"My show?" _Ned's father suddenly felt a sensation of horror wash over him._ "W-what did you do? Did you curse me?"

"Nope!" _Bill said, still chuckling._ "Even better - I cursed your son! I told you your show would be for the whole family!"

"You WHAT?" _Ned's father cried._

"Now whenever he touches dead people, they'll come back to life! People will come from all over the country to get your son to revive their dead loved ones! You'll be wading in money!" _Bill laughed with glee._ "And think of all the graves! People crawling out of them! Rotten corpses everywhere! Marvelous!"

 _Ned's father was speechless, so Bill continued._ "Oh, and tell you what _:_ I'll even throw in something extra. How about you take this voice that's been rattling around my head? It'll narrate your every action in a touching and poetic way!"

 _Now, I wouldn't say I was poetic - er -_

"'Course you are, narrator voice! You're practically the ghost of Shakespeare!"

 _Aww, that's so kind - really, you're embarrasing me -_

"Can it, voice, you've had your time in the spotlight. Can't you see we have a story to advance?"

 _Yes sir, I'm on it._

 _Ned's father was overwhelmed with horror, and he started to mumble to himself._ "This can't be happening. This can't be real. This is just a dream…"

"Oh, sure it's a dream, mister," _Bill said, getting closer,_ "But that doesn't mean it's any less real!"

 _Ned's father jumped, and the scene vanished. He blinked. He was sitting in his car where he had been sleeping earlier._

"It was just a dream," _he said to himself, relieved. He hunched over and tried to go back to sleep._

 _At first light the next day, Ned's father left Gravity Falls. He didn't feel rested from his sleep the night before, that awful dream haunting him. Sometimes he still heard the creepy chimes in his head that he had heard before meeting Bill, but he kept shaking his head and telling himself it wasn't real._

 _But on the drive home, he started to suspect the worst. What if his encounter with the yellow triangle demon had been real? What if his son was now cursed? What would he find when he got home?_

 _Ned's father sped home to Couer d' Coures, hoping his rational sense was correct and nothing would be wrong. But when he saw police cars outside of his home, his heart sank and his worst fears were realized._

 _Ned's father soon found that his wife, as well as the next-door neighbor, were dead. And no information could be gleaned from poor young Ned…it was as if the child was carrying a horrible secret, that_ _ **he**_ _had been the cause of those awful deaths that day, and that the curse had actually come true._

 _It didn't even make rational sense; according to the curse as Ned's father had heard it, Ned could touch dead things and bring them back to life. But the consequence of this ability was something Bill had failed to mention: the fact that, after one minute of being granted life, someone else would die in the person's place; and, if Ned were to accidentally touch the reanimated person a second time, they would be dead forever. This is how Ned's mother and his next-door neighbor had become the first victims of Ned's curse._

 _Ned's father was at a loss for what to do. Every time he looked at his son, he was haunted by what had happened - the fact that his family had been torn apart because of the curse that had needlessly been placed on Ned._

 _Guilt-ridden and angry, Ned's father chose to deal with this circumstance in a way that would spare him pain the most: he dropped Ned off at a boarding school and ran away to a new town to start a new life._

 _And that is how Ned the Pie-maker got his gift of bringing back the dead - for, as he grew older, he found that his ability_ _ **was**_ _a gift, for it granted him the opportunity to be with the one he loved, a girl who had died but who he was able to bring back to life again. And though they could never touch again, Ned was grateful that he was able to be as close to Charlotte Charles as he was, and he knew that without his special gift, he would never have been able to experience that happiness._


End file.
